Housekeeping - Good News, Maybe (Patreon)

I think many people believe that to make a TikTok video, you hold your phone up to your face for 2-1/2 minutes, click a few options, and you're done. Magic! The reality is the TikTok videos that provided the daily war summaries took over an hour. The foundation of the Situation Reports was the scripts for the TikTok videos. The war had only been going on for a few days when I realized that there was more value to the audience than the video itself. That turned into a podcast plus TikTok videos, but as people know, TikTok is a content moderation dumpster fire.

Candidly, it is very hard not to take it personally when a video that involves multiple people researching facts, an hour in the studio, which includes correcting the captions, edits, hashtags, etc., then to have it reported for "inauthenticity." My motivation to make content for TikTok is in the toilet because if there is one thing that triggers me, it is hypocrisy.

We hate cancel culture! People should be able to say what they think! Well, you can't say Ukraine is beating Russia. That's not what we meant!

So what's the good news?

Two things.

First - we are talking to a company next week that is a possible alternative to Patreon (told you we would look into this). No promises as we don't understand all their capabilities, the pros, and cons, etc. For example, we have a massive international audience, and having a platform that can only accept payments in the US and Canada is a non-starter. The platform is "invitation only," and they reached out to us. Flattering, but it raises other questions like their economic viability. This is not my first rodeo.

The second thing. Patreon has rolled out a new feature, and we also received a beta invite for the rollout. This is a tease (sorry), so I won't say what it is because we may swap platforms, and then it is moot.

Wait, what happens if I paid for an annual subscription and you swapped platforms? Nothing. We'll cross-post through the transition to honor those annual subscriptions - relax, and don't get too far ahead of yourself, as we have no plan to move before the end of the year, regardless. It would be a heavy lift.

One way or another, you can expect a return of video content soon and a lot more flexibility than we currently have. I've always had a huge problem with having to use Orwellian newspeak on TikTok. As amused as I may have been to see "left the chat" creep into reports from the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the late spring (did we do that?), we should just be able to say, "killed in action" or "there was a terror attack today."

We will know a lot more by this time next week and will be able to provide a clearer picture of where things will head for platforms and a return to producing video content. We will remain on Tiktok but will likely produce short-form videos (under 60 seconds) that are very generic and will hint as much as we can to avoid angering the volcano of the TikTok AI gods.

So stay tuned and stick around.